Sunday, August 5, 2012

What's Your Priority-Retirement, Travel, Cars, Boats

So recently my wife posted on Facebook about our upcoming trip to Nicaragua(she's there now, I leave in 5 days).  One of our family friends said "Don't you two ever stay at home" and this made me realize something, we have decided to make travel and vacation a priority. Now we didn't put it up on a bulletin board or write on our goal lists(well not entirely true, going to Nicaragua is one of 2012 goals).  But we have eliminated or tried other items as a priority, here's a brief look.

Retirement-Now don't get me wrong we save money in our 401k, have some money in an IRA, but to say we make it a priority would be a far fetch.  To me making retirement a priority is maxing out your IRA, 401K, or buying our home we plan to retire in.  While we are making a conscious effort to save for retirement, I can't say we talk about our retirement or retirement income daily, weekly, or even monthly, although I'm pretty nerdy so I try to talk about this with the wife from time to time.


Boats and Cars-Yes we own a car, no we don't own a boat.  As you can see not a big priority for us.  Let's start with the easy one, boats.  I do not own a boat, do not have a desire to own a boat, don't own a lake house, don't fish.  So this is not a priority pretty simple for me.  Cars on the other hand a little more complicated.  My wife owns and needs a car for work, she owns a 2007 Toyota Sequoia, it is fully paid for and like our previous retirement discussion we make a conscious effort to take care of the vehicle, but we are not planning on owning 2 vehicles or upgrading to the new 2013 model, we are happy with the vehicle and see no immediate need for anything else.
















Travel-So without even knowing it, travel and vacation have become a priority.  We like to take trips, whether it is to see family or go some place we have never been before.  When we were dating due to being far away from each other we would basically go on vacations as our dates, we deemed ourselves the "Vacation Couple".  In my 2012 goals I wanted to travel to Nicaragua Hawaii and they are booked and scheduled.  We made travel a Priority!  


The lesson I took from all of this is it's ok to spend money on things you really love to do, if you love driving your 40K BMW that's great, but you have to make that your priority, but don't try do everything.  I didn't mention that we drive a Mercedes, have a nice boat, and travel the world.  We know that to stay within our means we have decided to make travel and vacations a priority.  I hope everyone does the same.





No comments:

Post a Comment